It's been one year since the accident happened; the accident that ended up changing the course of my life in many different ways. This story was originally going to be included in my article for last week, but I decided that I had rambled on long enough, and that I should write a separate article just for this. A lot of people don't know the details of the events that transpired that day, but I think today's the most opportune chance that I will get to do so. This is the story of what happened as I remember it. I'm sure some details are out of order because of my exhaustion, pain, and the fact that I was on morphine for most of the day, but here it is.

After having the best birthday weekend of my life by getting to see my favorite band of all time in concert and visit with some of my closest friends, the day of my actual birthday turned into the worst birthday experience I could have ever imagined. I left my friend's house around 7:30 in the morning to head back to Plattsburgh so I could still be on time for my classes for the day. I was overly tired and hungry, having only gotten about five hours of sleep and not knowing if I'd have time to stop for breakfast, but I was determined to press on. I was able to find a bagel with cream cheese that my friend had left in my car the day before, so I was at least able to (hopefully) hold myself over until I got back to Plattsburgh.

Among the bad ideas that I've had, that was probably one of the worst. In my exhaustion, I started dozing off and drifting around while I was driving. I tried various tricks to keep myself awake, but they didn't work. I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air, having launched my car off of a snowbank. After rolling a couple of times, the car came to a stop on its tires in the middle of the road. I started panicking. I knew I had made probably the worst mistake of my life, and I didn't know what to do. I quickly unbuckled my seat belt and tried to get out of the car to assess the damage. I immediately found out that trying to move my leg was a bad idea, especially after I looked down and found a pool of blood around my foot and all over my homework. My phone was on the floor on the other side of the car, just out of reach, so all I could do was sit and wait until help came for me. Fortunately, one of the first men to find me was an off-duty police officer (I think. I'm a little fuzzy on some of the details here, with the whole "I just got in an accident and I don't know the extent of the damage to myself or my car I just know I messed up big time"), so he was able to get help to come in a relatively short time. Despite my panic, I tried to be as cooperative as I could, offering the information that I was asked for (between my screams of "Oh my God, what did I do?!" and "I'm so sorry!") and making sure that I had all of the necessities from my car (my purse and my phone, despite its bloody state) before I was taken away in the ambulance.

In the ambulance, I was given morphine shots to help deal with the pain in my leg as the EMT tried to get an IV drip going in my arm. I was still loudly crying most of the way to the hospital, so the EMTs who were with me tried to calm me down and distract me by talking to me about various subjects. At one point, it was mentioned to me that I was only the second accident that their department had up to that point in the year. Of course, I began to apologize profusely, but they tried to make me feel better by assuring me that they needed the practice of getting out and actually dealing with situations. A short while later, I heard my phone ringing and I knew that it must have been my grandmother, since the police had called her to let her know that I was in an accident. Since my phone was out of reach and the EMT was trying to get the IV going, my arms were a bit occupied, and I was unable to answer her calls. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to get a steady IV site established, so that would be left to the hospital when we got there. I was still quite conscious (and in a lot of pain) when I was brought into the ER, so I was still able to properly offer up my information to the next set of people who were asking for it. It was somewhat easier to give my date of birth, since every time I was asked when my birthday was I would cry out "Today!" and tell them the correct year.

At some point after my arrival, one of the men who had found me and helped at the scene of the accident showed up with his wife to see how I was doing. They stayed and visited with me for a while, giving me their phone numbers to let them know how I was doing after things had calmed down a bit. After they left, I fell asleep for a while, since there was nothing else to be done after the x-rays were taken to see if anything was wrong with me internally. When I woke up, one of my aunts who lived and worked relatively nearby was there. The next few hours are a bit of a blur. I remember doing a lot of apologizing (I'm 90 percent sure that the thing I said the most that day was "I'm sorry"), but the main thing was that I was being transferred to the Albany Medical Center so I could have surgery on my leg to put it back together. The surgery would either happen that night, or early the next morning, depending on when we got there. The same ambulance squad drove me from the hospital I was at to Albany Med, and the only reason I know this is because the EMT who was in the back with me told me this on the way to Albany.

When we got to the ER of Albany Med, we thought it was going to be a relatively simple process of getting me into a room and deciding where to go from there. The four other ambulances that showed up shortly after I did had other ideas. Since I was in the most stable condition, I was moved to the bottom of the priority list, and I was left laying on a bed in the hallway with my aunt and grandmother (who met us in Albany) for some time. I was at one point wheeled into a room so that the team of orthopedic surgeons could look at my leg and decide how to proceed. They had to unwrap and touch my leg to determine the extent of the external damage, and I screamed because it was the absolute worst pain that I had ever felt in my life. They made their decisions (what those were, I'm not entirely sure), and my leg was rewrapped before I was put back out in the hall to wait for a room to stay in. There was a kind gentleman who was waiting to be seen about some injuries that he had occurred in a fight who started chatting with my grandmother while we all waited. At some point during the conversation, a nurse arrived to take us up to my room. Considering the late hour, I wouldn't be operated on until early the next morning. As I recall, it was around 1:30 in the morning when I was finally able to settle in and get some sleep before my operation the next day.

If you've made it this far, I must congratulate you. I can imagine that this wasn't an easy story to read through. Trust me, it wasn't easy to live through either. I'm sure you might be asking why I'm bothering to share this now, a year after it all went down. To be honest, I kind of wanted to get it all off of my chest in the hopes that doing so will ease the nightmares that I occasionally have about it. Maybe there's some kind of lesson to be learned in this story, even if it's just "DON'T DRIVE WHEN YOU'RE TIRED YOU DINGUS!" I think that's an acceptable lesson. I think that it also shows how one seemingly small and trivial decision can change the course of your life. It's unlikely that I'll ever be able to walk without a limp again. The rods and screws in my leg might cause me problems if I ever travel. The arthritis that has developed in my foot prevents me from moving my foot in certain directions without a great deal of pain.
I'll never be the same as I used to be.

Think about the consequences of your actions.